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Using carbon credits to make a difference

Cybele Young uses many methods to live green, including buying carbon credits, which allow her to offset some of the pollution costs of everyday living. (AARON LYNETT / TORONTO STAR)

By Michele HenryLiving Reporter

Mon., July 2, 2007

Cybele Young is taking global warming into her own hands.

She's doing whatever she can to reduce her ecological footprint. She buys organic produce and locally raised meat. If she needs to travel somewhere out of bicycle range, she borrows her parents' car – she's planning to join a car share to rent her wheels by the hour. She's trying to scrape together money to retrofit her 1920s two-storey with solar panels and a green roof.

"We're looking into whatever we can find," she says, "anywhere we can lessen the impact." Young, 35, a downtown Toronto resident and mother of two, is also eyeing the hottest trend in environmentalism since reducing, reusing and recycling: carbon credits. They give pollution a dollar value and allow people to buy permission to emit carbon dioxide, a greenhouse gas, into the atmosphere.

Young says paying for the privilege to pollute makes her keener to reduce her carbon-emitting habits. "It's one more step where we can make a difference."

Carbon credits, patterned on the Kyoto Protocol's emissions-trading system and intended to rein in large, pollution-spewing companies, have found their way into the mainstream:

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Organizers of the conference portion of last month's North by Northeast music festival in Toronto offset the emissions caused by the participants' travel to the event and the air conditioning used to cool them once here.

ideaCity, a conference of speakers on a variety of issues held in Toronto lastmonth, also offset presenters' travel to the event.Moksha Yoga, a chain of hot yoga studios in Canada and the U.S., is going "carbon neutral" by paying for the privilege of keeping its classrooms heated. And celebrities, such as the members of the Barenaked Ladies and Pearl Jam, have also embraced this newest form of tree hugging.

The average Canadian, who pumps about five to six tonnes of carbon into the atmosphere each year, is jumping on the bandwagon. People are trying to take responsibility in advance of being wasteful by "offsetting" the cost of carbon-emitting activities, such as driving, flying, heating or cooling a home. Howie Chong, founder of CarbonZero, an organization bent on neutralizing Canadians' emissions, says buying credits is a good first step to slowing global warming. On his website, permission to send one tonne of carbon into the atmosphere costs $22.

Chong says becoming "carbon neutral" allows individuals to feel less helpless in the face of a potential global disaster. By and large, buying credits, he explains, means paying into programs that plant trees, develop or harvest renewable energy sources or reduce greenhouse gases.

The money collected on CarbonZero's website, carbonzero.ca, through the purchase of credits is channelled into projects such as the Cowley Windfarm in southern Alberta, which supplies electricity to the local grid. And, Chong says, in the near future his organization will also be funding solar power and retrofit projects around the GTA.

Planting trees is always good but may not be the answer to the world's environmental woes, says Myrna Simpson, assistant professor of environmental sciences at the University of Toronto.

Research shows trees can only "sequester" so much carbon, she notes, and carbon is only part of the problem. "There are a lot of other gases to look at as well," she says.

"There are still a lot of questions pertaining to global warming. We should recommend conservation as much as possible. Buy a more fuel-efficient car, turn your lights off."

Jamie Kirkpatrick, co-ordinator of Sierra Clubs of Canada's Ontario chapter, says buying credits inspires behaviour changes. It gets people thinking and acting green. But credits aren't intended to assuage pollution guilt or make people feel like they can emit greenhouse gases to their hearts' content.

"The danger is in people assuming they don't have to do anything differently, just pay a few bucks for their sins," he says. "But buying credits allows them to take steps beforehand, to see if they can make the decision not to create greenhouse gases."

Tat Smith, dean of the faculty of forestry at the University of Toronto, applauds the idea of buying credits, but cautions that it's important to pay into projects that are audited by a third party – to make sure they're beneficial. "The basic principle behind tradable credits is a good one," he says. "But we should all be looking for ways to do reduce our net emissions."

That's exactly what Young says she's doing. She's doesn't plan on buying credits to earn a licence to pollute. It's empowering, she says, to be able to do something to change the world – especially if she can't afford a hybrid car.

"It's a good little Band-Aid for right now," she says. "But it doesn't, by any means, mean global warming is off my mind."

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